MILFORD – When the weekend began, snow was falling – hard – on Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. But by Saturday afternoon, Bryan Wells was ducking beneath the cedars and tamaracks, humbly bent under their load of snow, and weaving between tree trunks along a hidden trail.

For the past six months, Wells and his wife, Pam, have spent nearly every weekend hiking or snowshoeing to secluded spots within the refuge, where they have secreted cameras in hopes of learning what types of carnivores make their homes in this 11,000-acre preserve.

“I just wanted to know what was out there,” Wells said.

With a $5,000 grant from the Portland-based Davis Conservation Foundation, Wells and some of his fellow members of Friends of Sunkhaze Meadows, have placed 12 still cameras and six video cameras in nooks and crannies all over the refuge. Each camera is outfitted with a motion sensor to engage the camera only when an animal appears. The video cameras have the addition of infrared light to ensure clear night footage.

Wells draws animals to his cameras with suet cakes or lures, strongly scented oils produced for use by hunters and trappers. But that’s no guarantee that the animal he’s seeking, or any animal at all, for that matter, will visit the site.

“This year, it’s been mostly trial and error,” Wells said. “If you don’t put them in exactly the right place …”

Wells was dealing with one of these technical problems Saturday, snowshoeing out to retrieve a video camera with a cracked lens, likely caused by stress from one of the bolts that holds the camera in place. Over the past few months, rabbits have gnawed through electrical cords, and sensors have been chewed by something with rather large teeth – the Wellses suspect a bear.

“We’ve had to replace a few cameras,” he said.

The cameras have captured some human life, mostly hunters stalking the refuge’s deer last fall, but none has ever been stolen or vandalized.

Wells has kept the project under wraps until now, however, out of concern over the polarization about predators in Maine politics. Last year’s bear hunting referendum and the continuing debate over whether coyotes should be snared to protect vulnerable deer herds have divided Maine residents about how predators should be perceived.

Wells’ interest in predators is far less political.

Learn about bobcats, and you learn about the rabbits they prey upon. Learn about coyotes, and you’ll understand the deer that sustain them during the winter months. With a new housing development going up just outside the Sunkhaze border, Wells is interested in preserving habitat for predator and prey alike, and he believes that the best way to do that is to educate children about the whole ecological system.

Over the next two years, Wells hopes to capture video and photographs of all of the refuge’s species, to produce an interactive CD designed to teach local fifth- through eighth-graders about the wildlife living in their back yard. Whether they grow up to be fur trappers, PETA activists or the average voters who struggle with these issues, children can benefit from an understanding of wildlife.

“For kids to grow up to respect and appreciate wildlife, they’ve got to be educated about it,” Wells said.

While not a formal partner in the project, because of time and financial constraints, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is supportive of its educational goal, state biologist Wally Jakubas said.

“Anything that excites children about wildlife has the potential to do some good,” he said.

Wells’ cameras already have captured fishers, white-tailed deer, moose, Eastern coyotes, red fox, black bears, raccoons and skunks. Three bobcats once made a simultaneous visit to a single site. And one recognizable gray jay has taken a liking to the cameras and is a frequent guest star.

Wells tells about one bobcat that was particularly curious, pacing and staring into the camera.

“You can tell he’s just trying to figure out what this is,” he said.

Wells still hopes to see a pine marten, a weasel-like animal known to frequent the area. And he would love to verify his suspicion that he once saw a mountain lion at Sunkhaze.

Friends of Sunkhaze is working with Clay Nielsen, a wildlife ecologist based at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, to collect data from the photographs and footage that might shed light on how different predators that share the same habitat interact with one another. Such research was all but impossible until technological developments that led to Wells’ remote sensor cameras, said Nielsen.

“It would take hours and hours of sitting in a concealed location, just watching the animals do their thing,” he said.

Wells also hopes eventually to share his data with the whole range of wildlife groups, from the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to the Audubon Society. He believes that an educational effort focused on carnivores could help to heal the rift between those who defend predators and those who demonize them.

Cherie Mason, a Deer Isle resident who in 1998 published a children’s book about predators called “Everybody’s Somebody’s Lunch,” welcomes an effort to educate children about the role that carnivores play.

“There really are no good or bad animals,” Mason said. “Children need to know that predators are just doing what they do.”

But those predators’ ability to kill popular game animals such as deer has made Wells’ project controversial among some hunters, who fear that his lures in Sunkhaze and the bait that he has placed near an additional camera on his own nearby property are drawing additional predators to the area.

Biologists downplay that risk. Predators in the area likely have added the camera sites to their normal hunting routines. But most carnivores in Maine, including coyotes, are territorial, so it’s unlikely that great numbers of new predators are coming into the areas because of a few baited sites, Jakubas said.

“For sure, the coyotes and other predators that are already there are going to frequent that area more,” he said. “But I’d be very doubtful that this is going to bring in coyotes from 100 miles away.”

As Wells impatiently crouched in the snow Saturday afternoon, peering into the camera for a peek at the past week’s video, politics was the last thing on his mind. This project isn’t about attracting coyotes or protecting coyotes. It’s about ensuring that they, and all the other species, have a place to live in decades to come.

“We all want to preserve and protect the environment,” Wells said. “The bottom line is that we have to work together to promote stewardship of the habitat where these things live.”

For more information about the carnivore camera project, visit the Friends of Sunkhaze Meadows Web site at www.sunkhaze. org.